Verstappen wins Spanish GP from pole for 40th career victory
Baku, June 5, AZERTAC
Max Verstappen had warned that his Red Bull team was good enough to win every single race of the Formula One season as he on Sunday took one more step toward that ambitious sweep by easing to victory at the Spanish Grand Prix, according to AP.
The two-time defending champion started from pole position and never was challenged as he breezed to his fifth win of the year.
Verstappen beat Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari to the first corner and then eased his superior car around the 4.6-kilometer (2.8-mile) Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya to finish well ahead of Mercedes pair Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.
“It is a big pleasure to drive a car like this and it showed on a day like this,” Verstappen said. “Hopefully we can keep it up throughout the year.”
But Verstappen warned against complacency.
“We just have to focus on ourselves and try to keep on improving our car,” he said. “Of course right now it all looks great, but you can’t stand still in this world.”
His dominant race performance came after he secured pole position with intimidating ease on Saturday. Verstappen set an untouchable top lap time and then watched the rest of the pack scramble for the other spots on the grid from his garage.
The Dutchman had said before practice for the Barcelona race that while the Red Bull cars were fast and reliable enough to win every single race, he figured that “We will always have tracks where it doesn’t work out exactly, bad luck in qualifying, mistakes, whatever.”
Sainz had to settle for fifth after being passed by the Mercedes cars and Pérez’s Red Bull.
Home favorite Fernando Alonso disappointed the legion of Spanish fans by finishing a season-worst seventh place, right behind teammate Lance Stroll.
Esteban Ocon was eighth in an Alpine ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu and Pierre Gasly in the other Alpine to round out the top 10.
As Verstappen sailed off into the distance, the competitive racing came for the other podium spots and the points positions of the top 10.
Mercedes got the better of Ferrari and Aston Martin with its new upgrade in the battle for a likely second-place finish in the constructors championship.
Hamilton, a six-time winner in Spain, got past Sainz early on and never let go of the runner-up spot.
Russell, meanwhile, produced the most impressive driving of the day by overtaking car after car to make up for his 12th-place start.
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